This dataset includes a collection of numerical breast phantoms for use in various optical and acoustic imaging simulation studies including photoacoustic imaging, ultrasound computed tomography and diffuse optical tomography. 

The numerical phantoms were generated from clinical Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) data collected at the Washington University School of Medicine with IRB approval. The dataset comprises three sub-directories, each corresponding to a unique phantom representing one breast of a healthy female. Each file named "MergedPhantom.DAT" is a binary file of unsigned 8-bit integers that can be reshaped into a three-dimensional matrix where each voxel represents exactly one tissue type: background is 0, fibroglandular tissue is 2, fat is 3, skin is 4, and vessel is 5. Corresponding speed of sound, density, optical absorption, and optical scattering phantoms then can be easily created by assigning values to different tissue types within this phantom. The voxel size common to all the phantoms is 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 mm.

Plaintext MATLAB scripts for loading the phantoms are given within each directory and the dimensions of each matrix of voxels may be read from those scripts.

Phantom-specific parameters:

Neg_07_Left:
BREAST_TYPE = Scattered fibroglandular
NX = 616, NY = 485, NZ = 719

Neg_35_Left:
BREAST_TYPE = Heterogeneously dense
NX = 284, NY = 411, NZ = 722

Neg_47_Left:
BREAST_TYPE = Extremely dense
NX = 495, NY = 615, NZ = 752

Note that a few (around 7 out of 700) X-Y slices near the beginning and end of Z-range show some unnatural 90-degree lines. This is due to the limitation of our automatic algorithm to deal with some very low skin intensity in the original data. We recommend skipping these slices if you are conducting 2D simulations. If your 3D simulation is severely affected by such outlier slices, please let us know so we can work something out for you.
